


She's a Loan, Of Course

by crookedwitness



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: a mysterious experiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedwitness/pseuds/crookedwitness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jen Watson grew used to strange greetings from her new flatmate fairly quickly. But that didn't mean that some greetings didn't have really bizarre consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She's a Loan, Of Course

Jen quickly grew used to the strangest greetings when returning to 221B. The first time she’d stumbled in to Sherlock commenting, “You really shouldn’t have accepted that patient from Sarah,” she was a bit knocked off balance, even if she had grown accustomed to Sherlock’s razor sharp and 99% accurate deductions on crime scenes and chases. She’d merely raised an eyebrow and nodded-- the older man had completely refused all tests and just wanted a new prescription of even stronger pain killers. It seemed very likely he puked on her shoes on purpose. She should’ve just told Sarah she had plans or Sherlock had a case on. Oh well.

 Some of the observations slid down Jen’s back like most of Sherlock’s not-insults (she doesn’t mean them like that Jen, and if she did, you’d be a mess of quivering tears in the back of a closet somewhere, so grow up), but one day after a long shift of kids with the flu, Sherlock simply glanced up, muttered, “Oh, you hate children? Hmm,” before returning to pounding the keys of Jen’s laptop into submission.

“Excuse me?” Jen asked, dropping her bag by the door and forcing her legs to take the last few steps to her chair before collapsing in an undignified heap. Mycroft would be appalled.

“Children. You abhor them. Rightly so, I’d say,” Sherlock mused, squinting at the screen. Jen wondered if Sherlock was confused by the screen or if the other woman needed glasses.

“I do not,” Jen replied, shifting to get more comfortable and shutting her eyes. “I just don’t enjoy when they’re all wriggly and sick.”

“Which I believe is how they spend the majority of their time,” Sherlock replied. Jen wondered if the other woman was looking smug. She probably was.

“You don’t know that, though. I could have heaps of maternal instincts,” Jen muttered, feeling herself drifting off. _You’re going to mess up your sleep schedule,_ she scolded herself, but without energy.

“Yes, I’m sure you’d give them enough tea to make any British mother proud,” Sherlock was saying, but Jen both didn’t know how to reply and couldn’t bring herself to care enough to reply anyway.

 

Jen was ripped from sleep by a crying angry bundle falling on her lap. She snatched it closer on instinct, keeping it from falling, and it thanked her by slamming a light but solid ball into her face. She fell further back into the armchair with the bundle and blinked.

There was a baby in her lap. 

She blinked again. The baby was still there, and in fact smiling at her. Jen wondered briefly if this was a very, very wicked dream, but she could see details on the child that she never would notice in a dream. For example, the baby wasn’t wrapped in a blue or pink blanket, but a light purple one with yellow flowers. And the baby’s little face was topped by light brown hair and dotted with two dark green eyes and--

“Sherlock?” Jen croaked. She cleared her throat, and in case the first time wasn’t loud enough, she tried again. “Sherlock!?” She tried to ignore the panic that was seeping into every inch of her bones and hair and skin and voice and oh my god did Sherlock adopt a baby just to prove a fucking point--

“Yes, Jen?” Sherlock asked, strolling around from behind Jen to sprawl on the settee across the coffee table. “How are you finding our new guest?”

Jen’s mouth worked around the words she couldn’t think up. Until, “How am I-- finding-- What are you talking about!?” Her mind added, ‘you daft woman,’ but Jen was too flustered to continue talking, and instead returned her eyes to the squirming thing in her lap. 

The green eyes blinked before the hand dropped the rattle-- she was hit with a rattle?-- and reached up to Jen’s face. The hand shoved at Jen’s cheekbone and the child started crying when, what? When Jen’s cheekbone didn’t move? Jen furrowed her brows at the kid and started bouncing her leg. The kid quieted but decided poking around Jen’s face would be a good replacement for the rattle.

“She’s a loan, of course,” Sherlock muttered, eyes skimming something on Jen’s laptop. Jen hummed, refocusing on the girl on her lap when a palm slid over Jen’s eye. “Mrs. Hudson says Mrs. Turner’s married ones have family over for the holidays and would love a babysitter for an hour or so.”

“Uh-huh,” Jen muttered, blinking under the little girl’s palm. “And this just so happened to coincide with you observing that I “hate” children, hmm?”

Sherlock slid her attention to the girl and woman across from her. “I would’ve found something else had it not, surely you know me that well?”

Jen sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she nodded. “You’re right of course. What is this little visit supposed to prove after all?”

Sherlock blinked before returning to the laptop. “Can’t bias the results,” she murmured. Jen sighed.

“Did you at least get baby-things from the--”

“In the kitchen,” Sherlock intoned, in her _I’m tired of this silly-little-normal-people-and-their-silly-little-minds conversation_ voice. Jen frowned and adjusted her hold on the girl to better carry her. Those rounds in pediatrics would help here, she supposed.

There was indeed a light blue bag full of diapers, a few changes of clothes, a bottle and some formula. Jen sighed and lamented how she always ended up on the rough ends of Sherlock’s experiments, but set about making a bottle for the girl. It seemed the girl had finally found Jen’s hair and really delighted in pulling the strands she could reach behind Jen’s ear.

“What’s her name then?” Jen asked, returning to the living room with the girl sucking on the bottle. Jen rubbed at the scalp behind her ear and wondered if she could get Sherlock to hold the girl long enough for her to yank at Sherlock’s curls. That would be a fair price to pay for this experience.

Sherlock frowned at the computer. “Amy, I believe.” Jen nodded, impressed Sherlock knew that much, and sat back down on the couch. How long would an hour feel like in the flat with a baby and very few toys? She picked up the rattle and hoped it wouldn’t be too long.

Jen found it easier than expected to keep the baby occupied. She remembered Harry telling her how fascinated she was as a kid by Harry’s weird faces, so when probably-Amy started fussing, Jen would try making a face or shaking the rattle or talking to her about how silly Sherlock was. Sherlock particularly disliked the last activity, but never did more than curl a lip in distaste. (Jen was kind/wise enough not to tell Sherlock how much that made her resemble Mycroft.)

It took Sherlock half an hour to start fussing in her own way. At first, it was just disgruntled scoffs and sighs at Jen’s laptop, but then it graduated to Sherlock sweeping her dressing gown around her legs and flopping to lay down and glare at the ceiling. Then the back of the settee. Then she started pacing. Jen kept careful track of the progression of her flatmate’s boredom in conspiratorial whispers in Amy’s ear. Amy loved keeping up with the consulting detective almost as much as Jen did, if her little giggles were anything to measure her enjoyment by.

As Jen was readying for the inevitable outburst-- “I’m BORED, Jen,”-- the door opened and Mrs. Hudson and another woman entered. Jen thought, with maybe a spot of bitterness, that Sherlock had probably already deduced her astrological sign and where she’d given birth.

 Mrs. Hudson seemed to have some baking to do, so Amy’s mother hopped up the stairs on her own. Jen went and opened the door for her, ready to return the responsibility for the tiny life that Sherlock had so nicely taken for her.

“Oh-- hello!” The woman smiled easily and held out her arms for her daughter. “You must be Jen. Thanks so much for giving us a few minutes of peace.”

Jen smiled back. “No problem.” Mostly, she added mentally, walking to the kitchen to grab the bag. “She was mostly angelic.”

“Mostly?” the woman asked, sliding the bag over her shoulder.

“She’s a hair puller, I guess,” Jen said, already lamenting not being able to find a good reason for Sherlock to hold Amy before she left.

“Oh, yes,” the woman laughed, shaking her head at Amy. “We are trying to get that phase over with, aren’t we?” She nodded at Sherlock with a smile and thanked Jen again before leaving.

Jen fell back onto her chair and rubbed her forehead. Half of her felt like she was already too old for Sherlock, but the other half was too excited even just by the other woman deciding to pick up a child just to test some hypothesis to ever believe she could be too old for Sherlock.

“How’d the experiment go then?” Jen asked, picking up the laptop Sherlock abandoned minutes ago. The browser was open to the weather patterns in San Francisco. Jen minimized that page and brought up her blog.

“Inconclusive,” Sherlock sniffed, retreating to clank glasses around in the kitchen. Jen hummed in reply and hoped that didn’t mean she’d be waking up to another child being thrown into her lap in the future.


End file.
